"Misbegotten"by Michael P. Kube-McDowell

Unaware of watching eyes in the
skies above, the stalking grove-wolf pressed its silent attack on
the solitary manatree. Circling beyond the reach of the
sleek-skinned manatree's stubby limbs, the grove-wolf suddenly
charged forward, throwing its weight against the fleshy
pedestal-leg of its prey.

This time, the manatree toppled,
the impact and the weight of its attacker bearing it to the
ground. Razor jaws telescoped and slashed at the soft,
unprotected underside of the manatree. Straw-yellow ichor spewed
from the fatal wound, puddling on the ground as the manatree's
limbs curled in the death sign.

"Beautiful," breathed
Eric Kimura. "Just beautiful."

Two hundred meters above the
haze-shrouded brownlands of Warril IV, Kimura lay face-down,
watching, in the transparent access crawlway which ran like a
seam along the silver-blue gas bag of the airship Calypso.
From that vantage, he enjoyed a view he considered superior to
that available to the station's three xenologists.

Imprisoned in the fuselage slung
beneath the semi-rigid balloon, wedded to their stereoscopic
widescreen and digital zoom, the XB's rarely saw the planet
first-hand. But any time Kimura could steal a few minutes from
his duties as the expedition's gentech, the crawlway offered a
private window on the planet's wonders.

Kimura felt a shuddery vibration
in the material of the crawlway as Calypso's feather-fan
engines labored to hold it in place against a sudden gusty
breeze. An instant later, a gentle bell sounded in his ear.

"Eric?"

The voice was that of Jayson
Ordecht, expedition director. "Here," Kimura said,
starting back down the crawlway toward the fuselage.

"How's it coming on the
dynamic balancer?"

"Just finishing," Kimura
lied. "What's up?"

"Chir'delana is reporting a
Monitor offline in grid 248."

The Draconan Chir'delana headed
the station's XB team. "You want me to run up in the skiff
and look at it?" Kimura offered, almost too eagerly.

"Not particularly -- but
Chir'delana does. 248's smack in the middle of the green zone,
about ninety minutes north. It's one of the Monitors on the
seasonal change baseline," Ordecht said. "I'd send
Archie, but Chir'delana wants him to go down and play with some
new corpse."

"All Archie could do is pull
it out of the ground and bring it back."

"That, too. Is there anything
on your board that won't wait until tomorrow?"

Kimura reached the end of the
crawlway and jumped down to the corridor deck. "Not really.
Tell Dione for me, so she doesn't think I stood her up for
lunch."

"I'll tell her you're out
with Betty," Ordecht said. Kimura could almost hear his
smile.

#

It took less than fifteen minutes
for Kimura to collect his kit, don an e-suit and climb into
Betty, the second of the two skiffs hangered in an open grid
beneath the fuselage. Whereas her companion skiff, Archie,
sported an array of teleoperated grips and handlers, Betty was a
taxi, nothing more -- a jet-propelled three-seat alloy egg.

"Betty. Go grid 248, best
speed," he said. The gravwarp skiff dropped away from its
mount smoothly, banked, and scooted northward. Kimura twisted in
his seat to look back at Calypso, floating gracefully in
the smoggy mustard-tinted sky.

Actually, Kimura realized, he had
no idea what Mars looked like. He had been born on the AES's
advance base in the Draco sector, the second child of an
ecologist and a technical historian. Taking his cue (and perhaps
his aptitude) from his mother, he had earned his gentech
credentials in Service schools on Advent -- a cool, watery world
grudgingly yielding to terraforming.

Warril VI was dramatically
different. It was a world of long days and spectacular sunsets,
muggy sixteen-hour days and eternal chill-damp nights. The
sunsets, like the smog, were consequences of the volcanic
activity located along the planet's equatorial rift zones. There,
great mound-mountains like volcanic puffballs dotted Warril VI's
elastic crust, venting boiling gases and a thick, slow-moving
lava through fissures and cracks.

Kimura would have welcomed a
close-up look at the dramatic dome mountains. But Calypso's
concern was the biota of the brownlands and the temperate
high-latitude green zones -- some fifteen thousand species
already cataloged, built on two different variants of the F-amino
acid set. The airship would spend the entire six months in the
planet's Northern hemisphere, never closer than several hundred
kilometers to the equator.

But Kimura did not feel too badly
cheated. It was still a marvel to him that he was here at all.
Survey took ten or twelve gentechs a year in this sector, all
from the top of the ratings. After taking eight years to climb
that high, Kimura was well-prepared to cheerfully appreciate what
he had.

#

The Monitor stood alone on the
high point of a gentle knoll covered with reddish whip-leaved
grasses and surrounded by a tangled wall of the fibrous growth
Chir'delana had named cellhedge. There was no obvious damage; the
slender pylon was upright, the silver globe atop it unmarked, the
tripod anchor secure and overgrown.

"Well," Kimura said,
looking up the ten-meter length of the pylon. "What's all
this, then?" He touched a gloved finger to a contact, and
the Monitor smoothly telescoped downward, bringing the
sensor-studded globe to a perfect working height. "Logging.
Still have power. I'm thinking it was the fault monitor. That's
the only other thing that could take it offline so fast."

It was a matter of a few minutes
to break the seals on the globe and uncover the mechanisms
within. Kimura's experienced eye quickly spotted a silvery lump
filling what should have been an open space between two
components. It looked for all the world as though someone had
poured a cupful of molten metal into the unit. But when he
touched the lump experimentally, he found its surface pliant,
plastic.

"Jayson?"

The answering voice was Dione
Welch's. "Not here, Eric. Can I help?"

"Get him."

"He's flying Archie for
Chir'delana. I'll get him as soon as I can. What's going
on?"

"This Monitor -- there's
foreign material inside it."

"What kind of foreign
material? Something biological?"

He had not seriously considered
the possibility until her question put the thought in his mind.
Backing a step away from the pylon, he said uncertainly,
"That's not supposed to happen."

"It does. My last assay, on
Jiphia, we had all kinds of problems with a flying species that
perched on top of the Monitors because they liked the
electric shocks."

"Ria here, Eric," broke
in a new voice. Ria Barrow was the junior XB. "Can you
describe it?"

"Well -- silver-skinned,
oblong, like a slug or a big pupa, maybe ten centimeters long and
that big around the middle. Sound familiar?"

"No."

"It's not moving. It looks
like it shorted out the data chassis of the Monitor. If it was
something living, it probably got toasted."

"How'd it get in? Any
clues?"

The seals and the top half of the
globe had been intact, so Kimura crouched, leaning on his left
hand for balance, and scrutinized the bottom half.
"Maybe," he called. "There's a hole about the
diameter of my little finger along the seam between one of the
sensors and the shell metal."

"I thought you said the thing
was ten cents around."

"I did--" Kimura started
to answer, when he was distracted by a sudden stabbing sensation
in the middle of his palm. "Ouch," he said, more in
surprise and annoyance than in pain, and tried to pull his hand
away.

But three long red tendrils of
whipgrass had become entangled around his wrist, and he could not
move his hand more than a fraction. It was like being in a snare
--

"Eric? What was that?"

A sudden involuntary shiver ran
through him, and a queasy cold blossomed in his stomach. Grabbing
a seamer from the kit, Kimura hacked at the wiry strands of grass
until he could jerk his hand free. He stared unbelievingly at his
palm as a brown-bodied worm-like something vanished into a
neat circular hole in the glove.

Speechless, Kimura tore furiously
at the binding straps on the e-suit's wrist seal, ripping the
glove free and flinging it away.

"No--"

"Eric!"

He did not hear. His entire focus
was on the flowing blood, the death-white skin, the neat hole
near the heel where the something had tunneled into his
body. There was a burning pain in his hand, and his forearm began
to throb, his body to shake.

"Sweet goddess mother of
mystery," he breathed, staring. "It's inside me. It
went right inside me."

Then the pain was suddenly
everywhere, and he screamed, an animal bathed in fire, all
thought banished and consciousness fleeing on its heels.

#

For three days, he was wretchedly,
achingly sick. Viselike muscle cramps left him bruised and
crippled. He vomited, horrible wrenching empty-stomached heaves,
until his throat was raw and his body drained. Fragmentary
moments of wakefulness served only to force him to relive the
terror of his twisted nightmares: visions of worms eating their
way through his brain, of being held helpless while he burned.

Then came a time when he awoke,
body peaceful, mind lucid, to rediscover that a world outside
existed. He saw that he was lying in his own bed in the cabin he
shared with Dione Welch, saw her sitting across the room at the
library interface, her back to him. Seizing hold of the sight, he
let go of the nightmares.

"It wasn't real," he
croaked.

Welch spun around in her chair.
There was strain and fatigue in her face, but a moist-eyed relief
in her eyes.

"Jayson -- Brak -- he's
back," she said into the ship's com, and then was at his
side. "How do you feel?"

He stared at her, puzzled, then
slowly raised his left hand and looked at the palm. There was a
puckered circle of newskin, pale and featureless, near the heel.

"How long?" he breathed.

"Five days. It's been five
days."

Just then Ordecht and Brak Dermot
arrived. Dermot, who doubled as team paramedic, came to the open
side of the bed. Ordecht lingered near the door.

"Brak--" Kimura extended
his injured hand toward the new arrival. "Is it gone?"

Dermot shook his head.
"No."

"You didn't take it
out?"

"I'm not sure how to. I -- we
don't know what it is. I don't know what's safe."

"You brought me back inside
when I was --" He searched for a comfortable word to
describe his status, but found none.

Dermot looked uncomfortably at
Welch. "Not my idea."

"Archie picked you up, and
they kept you in the skiff for the first thirty-six hours,"
Welch said. "When you had the bad manners not to die, I made
them bring you in."

Kimura pulled himself up to a
sitting position. "Thanks a lot, Jayson. Thanks for
caring."

"You're contaminated,"
Ordecht said without apology. "Even at biohazard 1, I owe
the rest of the team some precautions."

Frowning, Kimura looked to Dermot.
"So why aren't I still sick? Is it dead?"

"It ought to be," Dermot
said grumpily. "If it's like the rest of the life here,
you've got at most one protein in common. Different phospates in
your DNA chains, mostly different amino acids in your proteins.
It shouldn't have gone after you."

"Maybe we should just tell
it."

"Your body's been trying to.
Probably its waste products are what were making you miserable --
and driving your immune system nuts. Maybe since you're not dead,
that means it is." He took the wand of the diagnostic imager
in his hand. "Let's find out."

#

"Damn."

Kimura frowned. "I hate it
when a doctor says that."

"Lucky for you I'm not a
doctor," Dermot said. "Hold still. You're blurring the
scan."

"Yeah, lucky."

"I'm serious. I don't know
half what you'd like me to about human infections and disease.
But I know as much as anyone about parasites."

"Is that what this is?"

"Your other choice is
'predator,'" Dermot said, passing the wand over Kimura's
left shoulder. "Hmm."

"It's there, dammit,"
Kimura said irritably. "Why don't you get someone in here
who knows how to use that thing?"

"I'm the best we got. You
want to wait for Alcestis to come pick you up, I'll go
back to my knitting."

"Maybe your machine can't
detect an X inside a human body."

"It's the same kind of imager
Archie uses when we're poking around a kill. Trust me, you have
no secrets. Besides, your visitor showed up just fine when we
brought you in."

"Then why can't you find it
now?" Kimura demanded, vaulting out of the bed, his body
shaking with the restless energy of his impatient anger.
"Don't you understand? I've been violated. There's a
goddamned alien parasite crawling around in my guts." He
smacked the top of the imager with the flat of his right hand.
"I can feel it, goddamit, I can feel it. I want it gone. I
want it gone."

After another hour of fruitless
scanning, Dermot excused himself, saying that he would take the
data pack to the XB lab for a more detailed review. It seemed an
excuse to Kimura, at least. Embarrassed by his failure,
uncomfortable being near Kimura, Dermot had grown increasingly
cross. His departure was a relief to both men.

But it left Kimura alone, and
alone was not a good place to be under the circumstances. Ordecht
had called Welch away for some sort of private conversation, and
Char'delena and Barrow were off with Archie up in 248.

Their conversation, at least, was
not private, and Kimura listened in on their com chatter for
company.

"I know," Char'delana
said. "It's offensive. But if it is a parasite that's taken
hold of Eric, that's where we'll find more of them, inside the
native species. And we need at least one specimen to study if
we're going to help Brak treat him."

"He shouldn't have been
brought back inside. Dione jacked Jayson on that one."

"Save your indignation,"
Chir'delana said crisply. "The minute Eric was attacked,
this planet went to biohazard 2. We're all going to have to prove
we're clean before Alcestis will pick us up."

"I just want to make sure I
can."

"I want to know what
kind of F-acid critter can survive a bath in our
biochemistry."

There was a brief silence.
"What if Brak can't clean Eric out?"

There was a longer silence before
Chir'delana's answer. "I imagine that will be Division's
decision. Right now, I'd have to recommend that he be quarantined
here."

"For how long?"

The silence that followed was the
longest of all.

"Tondalu," Barrow said
at last. "A big one."

"Where?"

"There. Six points starboard,
along the rim stream."

"Okay. I see it. Archie, arm
the stinger, please. Ria, get me a good angle--"

Kimura switched off the shipcom,
suddenly weary. He had fought fatigue since awakening from the
fever-coma, certain that more nightmares awaited him. But the
real world had proved no refuge from the ugly and the
frightening. Given the choice, he thought resignedly, I might as
well sleep.

#

The next time, it was Chir'delana
wielding the imager's wand, with Dermot hovering expectantly
nearby. Her face set in a businesslike frown, the grey-haired XB
supervisor slowly passed the wand over Kimura's bare chest,
narrowing the focus to a small area just below the heart. When
she consulted the display, her frown deepened. Wordlessly, she
swept through a full-circle scan of her subject's chest cavity.

"My mother's tonsils--"
she exclaimed finally, stepping back.

"You see?" Dermot
pounced. "You see?"

"See what?" Kimura
demanded.

Chir'delana seemed not to hear
Kimura. "The boundary layer is inert. Non-nucleated
cells."

"Apparently," Dermot
said. "But it's all made out of A-proteins. At first, I
thought it was something Kimura's body was producing in defense
-- like keloidal scarring."

"No," Chir'delana said,
shaking her head. "It is the parasite."

"But look at the volume --
fifteen or twenty times the entry size, even allowing for its
expanded structure."

"Yes. It must be metabolizing
A-proteins as well as the available sugars. I would not have
believed--"

"Do I have a right to know
what's going on?" Kimura asked sharply, turning to face the
quarrelling XB's.

"I didn't tell him what I
suspected," Dermot said. "He may not be
following."

Chir'delana nodded, unperturbed.
"Something very interesting has happened, Eric. The parasite
has built an encapsulating shell that matches the tissues around
it. Your body doesn't know where to find it."

"But you found it."

"It's made a space for itself
between the pleural sac and the spine. If you take a deep breath,
you may feel a slight pressure on your lungs."

"Like just a hint of
congestion?"

"Possibly."

Kimura nodded. "I've been
feeling that since I woke up yesterday. This shell -- is it why
I'm not sick anymore?"

"Almost certainly. When the
parasite first entered, it was like a mouse in the clockworks,
throwing everything out of kilter. Now it's found itself a safe
little nest out of harm's way."

"Have you found it in any of
the native species yet?"

"No," Chir'delana said.
"But we will now, I'm sure -- now that we know how it likes
to hide. It's probably already in our data, but we didn't
recognize it. And we do know what the ground-living free phase
looks like, of course."

"This also means we can start
looking at a way to get it out," Dermot added.

"No," Kimura said.

Dermot stared, taken aback.
"Why not?"

Kimura looked to Chir'delana.
"This is unusual, isn't it?"

"If it weren't, there would
be no such thing as a Class 1 biohazard. Every planet would
either be dead or deadly," Chir'delana said. "I know of
no other case of an organism bridging a biochemical gap this
wide. This organism is a molecular chameleon."

"Then you'll want to know how
it does what it did."

"Yes."

"You'll never be allowed to
infect another human deliberately."

"True."

"Then you may as well learn
as much as you can from me while the parasite and I are getting
along."

Dermot sent a questioning glance
sideways to Chir'delana. "I think we should get it out of
you as quickly as possible, Eric."

"Why? I feel fine. I feel as
well as I've felt any time we've been here -- any time in the
last year."

This time, the look Dermot sent to
the Draconan was a plea for help.

"It would be an invaluable
opportunity, Eric," Chir'delana said slowly. "But your
life is also invaluable. I can't ask you to assume that
risk."

"You didn't ask," Kimura
said, reaching for his shirt. "Let's at least wait until you
find other specimens."

"We have the one from the
Monitor now," Dermot said quickly.

"Dead," Kimura said.
"Not very useful."

"It has not been, in
fact," Chir'delana said. "We would never have predicted
this from our examination of it.

"I think Jayson should be
involved in this decision," Dermot said nervously.

"Why?" Kimura asked
sharply. "Is it his body?"

"This is very
dangerous," Dermot muttered, shaking his head.

"I'm not afraid," Kimura
said.

They were not brave words. They
stated a simple truth. He was not afraid. So clear was that
truth, so peaceful and unconflicted his inner world, that Kimura
easily shrugged aside the voice that wondered why.

#

Calypso was crying for
Kimura's attention.

In the six days since the attack,
a dozen ship's systems had posted maintenance calls on the
gentech's scheduling board. None of them were serious, but all
were annoying. The dynamic balancer, which juggled the water
ballast to keep the airship level and stable, had adopted a
two-degree list to port. A navigation interface on the bridge had
arbitrarily decided not to accept voice commands. The signal from
Number 6 optiscan was breaking up intermittently.

But when Kimura paged Ordecht to
ask for permission to return to work, he met with a stone wall.

"Look, Jayson, I'm not sick.
I've got more energy than I know what to do with. Why don't you
let me get at some of these things?"

"You are sick. How
can you say you're not?"

"I told you. I feel terrific.
It isn't going to bother me to go pull a sensor on the port DB
tank, or tweak the box on the nav station."

"Just because I wear Command
bars doesn't make me an idiot. Parasites reproduce, don't you
know?" Ordecht said, tightlipped. "That thing inside
you could be an egg case. How would it be if I let you out and
three hours later a couple of hundred little ones come spewing
out of you?"

"That isn't going to
happen."

"Is Chir'delana offering
guarantees?"

Kimura bristled. "If what's
inside me does reproduce, the 'little ones' will be looking for a
nice little patch of acidic Warril VI soil, not more hosts. And
they'll be very disappointed when all they find is carburized
deckplate."

"How do you know what they
need?"

"Chir'delana said--"

"Chir'delana said that they
were chemical tricksters. What's to say that they can't adapt to
this environment?"

He's afraid, Kimura belatedly
realized. The ignorance embodied in the question was dwarfed by
the fear which prompted it. "If I can deal with what's
happening inside my body, why the hell can't you?"

"Every time you tell me how
good you feel, I worry that much more," Ordecht said
pointedly. "I'd be a lot happier if you were still scared to
death."

#

The grove-wolves were running,
twenty fifty five hundred five thousand graceful bodies charging
head-down across the plain, returning north to the greenlands.
The natural maze of the interlocking circles of cellhedge --
fragmentary at first, where one bioclime graded into another --
slowed but did not stop them. Paced overhead by Calypso,
the grove-wolves plunged through the gaps until there were no
more gaps, then wriggled through bristly crawlholes, emerging
with their brown-grey coats matted with fragments of sticky new
growth. In a few days, they (and the seedlings they ferried)
would be scattered across several thousand hectares, one mating
trio to a cell.

Envy consumed Kimura as he watched
them run. The animal-images playing across the display of the
tiny slate, flat color shadows of reality, mocked him with their
freedom. I should be there--

He laughed uncomfortably at the
thought. Sure. I should be on Warril, running with the
grove-wolves. I should be giving the local flora a chance to chew
on me from the outside as well as from the inside.

And yet, there was something
distinctly different in the way he now viewed Warril. It was as
though he were somehow plugged into the web of life there, as
though the thing inside him had somehow made him part of what was
happening below.

You've got cabin fever, boy,
and got it good. Mr. Ordecht, your gentech will be buggy and
crazy both if you don't let him out soon--

"There's a lot to do,"
she said, oddly defensive. "A lot of work for the XB's. The
library's been at full capacity most of the afternoon. And a
flurry of traffic with Sector. Inquiries. Updates."

"It doesn't matter,"
Kimura said. "I'm just glad you're here now."

He took a step toward her, but she
went the other way, towards the double closet. "Chir'delana
wants to put a tracking monitor on you overnight," she said,
her back to him as she opened the closet. "She asked me to
tell you she'd be in later."

"Later enough for us to take
some time out now?"

She went rigid. "I don't have
the energy for sex now, Eric."

"Oh -- sure. I
understand." Sitting back on the bed, he watched, puzzled,
as she pawed through her clothes and toiletries. "Listen,
you've been out there with the others. Who can I recruit to lobby
Jayson?"

For the first time, she turned and
met his eyes. "Why? What do you want?"

"Out," he said,
spreading his hands expressively.

"Jayson doesn't think that's
safe."

"I know. I need some help
changing his mind."

Her gaze flicked downward, and she
turned back to the closet. "I don't think its safe, either.
These tricksters--"

So the word had entered the ship's
argot as a name for the parasites. "You don't," he
echoed.

Silent, Welch pulled a caddy tray
and a jumpsuit from the closet and swung the door shut.

"Hey, what's going on
here?" Kimura demanded, standing and blocking her path to
the door.

"I can't stay here," she
said. "I'm sorry."

"Dione--"

"I barely slept last
night," she said. "And I have to be sharp, for the rest
of the team." The explanation sounded rehearsed, barely
apologetic.

"Dione -- I've got to have
some company."

"I'll talk to you on the com.
But I'm going to double with Ria tonight."

Kimura stared, wounded. "You
don't have to leave right now-"

"I still have work to
do."

"Dione--" He reached out
to draw her to him, but she recoiled from his touch.

"No. I can't," she
anguished. "I can't. Not while that thing is still inside
you."

Reading her eyes, he saw that he
had forced her to say what she had come here hoping to hide -- a
deep revulsion that she could neither justify nor banish.
Surrendering, he retreated and let her pass by him and out of the
room.

When she was gone, he slumped
against the wall, eyes closed, until he had collected himself. Not
her fault, he tried to tell himself. Nobody was ready
for this. And she doesn't understand-- He sent himself
searching for a diversion, settling at last for a tamka
duel with the computer.

But before long the restless
energy, now tainted by rejection, came on him again. On impulse,
he called up a month-old recording of the two of them playfully
making love, and as he watched he began to idly masturbate. The
empty pleasure and sense memories took the sharp edge off his
pain, but he could not sustain either for more than a few
minutes.

"Cancel," he said in a
whisper, and the display blanked. "'lana."

The Draconan came on the line
immediately. "Is there a problem, Eric?"

"If you want to wire me,
better come do it now," he said forlornly. "Because in
ten minutes, I'm going to dose with whites until I can't feel
anything anymore."

#

In the morning, none of it seemed
as important as it had the day before. Not Jayson's
intransigence. Not Calypso's aches and anomalies. Not
even Dione's defection seemed to have the power to touch his
emotions. The serenity to accept the things I cannot change--
He felt a quiet peace, a gentle euphoria, like the warmth of
afterglow, the clear-eyed calm of hexodrine.

He was aware, too, of something
else. At first he did not know what words to use to name it.
There was a newness inside him, familiar and foreign. He felt
divided, polarized somehow, though the feeling was not an
uncomfortable one. It was as though a line had been drawn inside
his body to mark the boundary between self and other -- a
heightened awareness of the life inside him. The trickster was no
longer merely a pressure on his lungs. It was now a presence.

And yet all was one, integrated,
harmonious. He shared himself with the other life, and it was
pleasant, warm. He felt the energy of the other life, and fed
from it.

When Chir'delana came to the cabin
for a brief morning exam, Kimura did not share his new
perceptions. Like the fast-fading memory of a dream, he knew that
the search for the right words would guarantee he would not find
them, would blunt the fine and delicate edge of the feeling. He
said nothing of it, even when the xenobiologist told him that the
parasite was growing.

"The capsule is fifteen
percent larger than last night, and forty percent larger than
when Brak first measured it," Chir'delana said. "By
tomorrow it will approach the size of the specimen you found in
the Monitor. Are you sure that you're not feeling any
discomfort?"

She met his eyes with her level,
unblinking gaze. "Why does it puzzle you?" she asked as
she packed away the microsamples of blood and tissue. "They
think about what happened to you and it frightens them. They look
at you and wonder why you are not fighting. Why you are not as
they think they would be. Why you do not wonder at these
things."

Kimura shrugged off the challenge
in her words. "I haven't done anything wrong," he said.
"I don't understand why you aren't all with me."

"They have no experience
comparable to yours. They can only think of this as a sickness,
and your response as a surrender. In this matter, it is easier
for you to be understanding of them than the reverse."

"You don't include yourself
with them?"

She showed a faint, brief smile
before she turned for the door. "No," she said. "I
have had children."

The oddest thing about her answer,
Kimura thought, was that he understood it.

#

Kimura passed another day and
night alone except for Chir'delana's brief but regular
"collection" visits and a longer but less satisfying
appearance by Dione.

She tried to be both friendly and
cheerful, but the underlying discomfort showed through.
Eventually, Kimura wondered aloud if she had been ordered there.
Though Dione quickly denied it, Kimura read in her answer that
she had, in fact, bowed to some sort of pressure short of an
edict. He did not miss her much after that.

Some of the time he spent alone he
filled watching the planet below. With six cameras mounted on Calypso
herself and the output of the extensive array of Monitors to
choose from, there was a rich variety of options.

He heard the cracking and popping
of a continental glacier as it edged south from the high
latitudes -- watched nesting grove-wolves sealing the crawlholes
to their chosen homes with a tangle of branches -- saw manatrees
massing on the brownlands to exchange gene cells before going off
to begin building new polyps -- a hundred planetscapes, some
quiet, some vibrant.

And watching, he built what he
could only call a longing for Warril VI -- a longing that even a
visit to his private aerie in the accessway could not have
satisfied. And this restlessness, unlike the others he had felt
in recent days, did not pass away. It was a binding and a
calling, an invitation to union. He began to feel that, as he was
to the trickster, they both were to the world below.

When his attention was not focused
on the data displays, it was directed inside. Like a blind man in
the dark, he reached out for the presence he sensed there and
asked to know it. Was there consciousness there, or merely a
molecular automaton? Did the trickster feel him as he felt it?
Did it feel at all? Hours slipped away easily as Kimura practiced
the unpracticed arts of reflection -- introspection --
contemplation.

What are you, he asked.
But never, he later realized, did he ask what will you be?.
That door, he made no effort to open.

#

"Eric -- will you join us in
the multi? I've called a team meeting to review what the XB's
have come up with on your parasite."

The voice was Ordecht's; the
surprise, complete. "Are you sure that you don't want me to
just monitor from here?"

"I'm sure."

"Well -- when?"

"We're gathering now."

"I'll -- I'll be there in
five."

Kimura struggled with
disequilibrium. He was the cat, closeted too long, suspicious at
the sight of an open door, uncertain whether it led to any place
he wanted to be.

But he went, the corridors and
cabins of Calypso striking his eyes with such
unfamiliarity that they seemed to belong to an alien world. The
faces of Dermot, Barrow, and Ordecht, looking up at his from
around the table in the multi, were those of dimly remembered
strangers.

When Kimura was seated, Ordecht
signaled his readiness to Chir'delana with a nod.

"The entire XB department has
been logging long hours on this problem," she said.
"Ria and Brak have been superb. The results have been very
positive. We've learned a great deal about what's inside
Eric."

"So have I," Kimura
said.

They chose to take it as a joke,
smiles and polite laughter. "In the process, we've also
learned a great deal about Warril VI," she continued.
"Even outside our lab, I think it's common knowledge that
life here is based on proteins built from the F-amino set --
twenty-two left-handed amino acids, five of which are also in the
A-amino set on which our proteins are based."

Ordecht nodded again.

"It has been received wisdom
in xenobiology that the F-aminos are far enough away from the
A-aminos to form a deep biological gulf between the proteins they
build -- and by extension, between the organisms built on those
proteins. These last few days, the tricksters have taught me
differently. They can bridge that gap."

Kimura became aware that, although
Chir'delana was addressing them all, both Dione and Ria were
watching him instead.

"They can do this,"
Chir'delana continued, "because they employ a biochemistry
which allows them to parasitize a wide range of Warril's native
species. We have found the adult phase in nine major
chemoorganotrophs, some of which have almost as little in common
with each other as we do with them. The range of protein
chemistries involved is astounding.

"The trickster represents one
of the cleverest bits of organic engineering I've ever seen. The
ground-living phase -- the 'plant,' if you will -- produces a
transfer cell which is almost completely information, that says
'this is what I know.'

"Apparently, when the
transfer cell enters the host, it 'looks up' the host's chemistry
in its chemical library. If it can't find an entry, it goes
underground -- builds an enclosing membrane of native material
and sets out to analyze the chemistry of the host."

"To complete the cycle, and
the story: the trickster that can survive in a new host makes
large numbers of a much smaller transfer cell containing what
amounts to an abstract of the secrets of its success -- one that
says 'here's what I've learned.' When one makes its way back to
one of the parent forms, the information is merged and
reproduction follows."

"So right now, the trickster
inside Eric is analyzing human biochemistry," Ordecht said,
"and preparing to pass on what it discovers?"

"Yes."

"And if it does so, it will
become much easier for the tricksters to infest other
humans."

"Yes," Barrow said.

The heavy-handed choreography of
the meeting suddenly became apparent to Kimura. Give him what he
wants and let him out, so he'll be more kindly disposed -- bring
him together with the family and make him feel like he's part of
the decision -- then turn the screws. My friends --

"So you have a
diagnosis," Welch said. "Do you have a cure?"

Not surprisingly, it was Dermot's
turn. "Luckily, we're not too shabby at the biochemistry
business ourselves," he said. "Even though the
trickster's hiding from Eric's body defenses in that capsule, it is
feeding off him -- metabolizing material drawn from his tissues.
That gives us a way to go after it."

He patted the small, soft pouch
lying on the table. "Eric, we've come up with a
host-restriction endonuclease -- a cleavage enzyme -- that will
slice through the trickster's memory proteins like a hot wire
through a spiderweb. Molecular dissection."

"What about effects on
Eric?" Welch asked.

"None. The enzyme won't find
the target molecular bonds anywhere in his biochemistry." He
looked at Kimura. "You won't feel a thing."

"Terrific," Ordecht
said. "Terrific work, everyone. Well, Eric -- some good news
at last. The end of this probably can't come too soon to suit
you. Brak, will you do the honors?"

Dermot reached for the pouch and
started to stand, but Kimura was quicker to his feet.
"No," he said.

"No?" Ordecht echoed.

"Eric--" Welch began.

"No," Kimura repeated,
backing toward the door.

"Son of a bitch,"
Ordecht said, slowly rising from his chair. "'lana, I
apologize. You were right. Eric -- slow down a moment and think
this through. Listen to what we're saying."

"Not after this,"
Ordecht said. "Not with you as proof that it's not safe
here."

"You don't understand,"
Kimura said, retreating, his face contorted by anguish. "You
don't understand. I can feel it living in me. I don't want to
feel it die."

#

Though he fled the room, they
would not let him escape. Dione swept out of the multi on his
heels, fire-eyed and furious.

"You goddamned idiot. You're
the one who doesn't understand," she shouted, following him
down the corridor. "It's got you so doped with your own
neurohormones you can't think straight."

"You can't make me kill
it," he mumbled, almost inaudibly, his feet still carrying
him away from confrontation.

"I can rub your nose in your
own stupidity," she fired back. "Ask 'lana to show you
the graphs. You're being manipulated, juiced with shots of warm
fuzzy every time you get close to rebelling at what's happened to
you."

Calpyso was a small
world. All too quickly, Kimura found himself in the forward
mechanicals compartment, with only the access crawlway left for
escape. His steps slowed, and he turned to face Dione.

"You don't have the right to
tell me what to do," he said.

"Eric -- I don't want to tell
you what to do," she said, her voice softening. "I want
you to see what needs to be done. Raise your eyes and look past
today. Look past what you're feeling now, however wonderful it
is."

"It is
wonderful."

Frustration contorted her
features. "Can't you see what you have to give up to keep
it?"

Chir'delana had joined Dione as
she was speaking, coming up behind her from the corridor.
"Dione -- he's chosen to be separate from us," she
said. "Leave him alone."

"But--"

"He can't hear you now. He
can only hear himself. Let him be."

Dione hesitated, then lowered her
eyes and nodded. And then they left him. He waited, expecting
Ordecht, expecting Dermot. Expecting them to enforce their view
of what was best for him. He waited a long time before he could
believe they were not coming, before he could let himself hope
that they might leave him alone.

And when he did at last begin to
believe, he clambered up into the access crawlway and settled
into his familiar spot. The world below was peaceful, and he
tried to let go of the conflict and tension and feel the same
peace inside.

But he could not find it.

I need more distance, he
thought desperately. I have to leave--

And: I can't count on them.
They're just waiting for me to give in.-

And: who is thinking these
thoughts?

And then he returned to his cabin
to find Dermot's little pouch waiting for him on the bed.

"My friends--" he said.
"My friends."

#

"Thank you," Kimura
said. He stood propped up in a far corner of the cabin, arms
crossed nervously over his chest.

Chir'delana nodded gravely and
perched on the end of the bed. "Is something
happening?"

"What did Dione mean, about
the graphs? Is there something you haven't been telling me?"

"Only that which you are not
capable of believing."

"What do you mean by
that?"

Shrugging, she said, "If you
feel pleasure, and I tell you that the pleasure is false, your
own experience denies my claims. I read the scans and see
endorphins and enkephalins arising not from the pituitary, but
from elsewhere in your body -- placental hormones from a placenta
you do not possess, the genes activated from your X chromosomes
-- a hexodrine drip at precisely the dosage to create a feeling
of well-being. These mean much to me, but little to you."

"You don't want me to be
happy," he accused.

Chir'delana shook her head.
"Untrue, Eric. Nor does what I want matter. You claim the
right to choose for yourself. I accept that claim, and have
obliged the others to accept it as well," she said.
"But I claim in return the right to ask you who or what is
choosing."

"I am."

"So long as you are
certain." She rose to her feet. "Was there more?"

"No."

Nodding, she turned toward the
door.

"Yes," he said suddenly.
He took a tentative step outward from the corner. "I've been
wondering what it will become."

"It is what it will
become," Chir'delana said. "Perhaps you should wonder
instead what you will become."

It was a gentle rebuke, but a
rebuke all the same. But he did not let it stop him from asking
the question he had called her there to ask. "'lana -- is it
intelligent?"

"Do you think that it
is?"

"I don't know," he said.
"Sometimes."

"It is such an easy question,
and such a hard answer," she said, her smile soft and
maternal. "Not a question merely of biology, but of
philosophy and spirituality. You ask if the trickster is
intelligent, and I have no answer. I only know that you
are."

#

Kimura knew there would be
screaming. There was never been any hope of avoiding that. It was
enough if he could avoid being stopped.

They should have locked him in,
killed his cabin terminal and locked him in. But they were still
being reasonable, still giving him room. Too much room. They
should have locked him in, but they did not. So it was easy. Easy
for him to unravel Ordecht's command lock on the ship's skiffs.
Easy for him to freeze the ship's systems for the three minutes
it took to board one and be gone.

They knew, the moment they were
free, what had happened, what mistake they had made. They called
to him, words of anger and apostasy, reason and suasion. He did
not turn off the com and shut them out -- it was their right to
rail. Nor did he answer. He listened to the words meant for him,
and to the words they meant for each other, with roughly equal
concern.

"This crosses the line,
Kimura. You've taken the choice out of my hands. We're going to
come after you and we're going to bring you back. That is a
fact--"

"Archie's cold and dark,
Jayson. He scrambled the O.S. good."

"We can reload from the
library in about forty minutes--"

"Eric, don't make things
worse. Give me a chance to keep this in the family--"

"What's happening? Where's
Eric?"

"He's taken Betty."

"Where's he going?"

"From the track, back to
248--"

"Eric, you can't take the
trickster home--"

"He also took the
injector."

"He did?"

"Well, it's not in his
room--"

"What's he going to do, teach
them about that, too? Goddamn chip-head --"

Kimura looked down at the seat
beside him and the pouch resting there. He touched it tentatively
with one finger, and felt the hardness of the injector cylinder
through the cloth. Then he looked out the t-port at the
scrub-hedged greenlands below. Already the skiff was slowing.

What was he going to
do?

What I want to, came the
quick answer. What I want to-- "Eric --
please --"

The same voice asked in his mind's
ear, Can't you see what you have to give up to keep it?

What I want--

"Betty," he said.
"Abort last command. Go 51, best speed."

#

Eric Kimura walked a hundred
meters from where the skiff rested and settled cross-legged on
the dry, sterile ground. The air was thick, choking, the ground
warm to the touch. Seven spewing gas vents dotted the face of the
great turtle-shell mountain rising before him. Ropy pillars of
lava squirmed and toppled in slow motion like pyroclastic worms.

The decision was already made. He
had made it the moment he had turned Betty southward, turned her
away from the greenlands for the dead expanses of the rift zone.

But a decision was not an action
was not a promise to anyone but himself. He held the pouch
cradled on his lap and let tears run down his cheeks, let himself
think his rheumy eyes were the product of sulfur dioxides and fly
ash.

Only partly alive. It's really
only partly alive. The rest is me. And I'll still be here.

The ground quivered beneath him, a
faint echo of a feeble earthquake, of turgid pools of lava slowly
shifting somewhere below. When it's gone I'll know, he
thought. I'll know which part was me and which part was it.
What I wanted and what it wanted. I'll know, even if it will be
too late to use the knowledge. At least I'll know--

He folded back the flap of the
pouch, and the injector fell into his hand.

I will never know this feeling
again. What I give up now I give up forever.

The stop-catch on the injector
surrendered to a soft twist.

But what I claim now will be
mine forever. Not a bad trade. Not such a bad trade. Killing to
live. To live free. To take the choices back.

Inside the cylinder, twelve
milliliters of coppery solution waited. At eye-level, it
shimmered in the late sunlight.

It's easy, they said. You should
be glad to be rid of it. It won't affect you at all, they
promised. Empty bleating words from ignorant mouths.

If you feel -- if you know --
forgive me--

It was not easy, even if it was
right. Touching the injector to his skin, thumbing the trigger
until the cylinder was empty -- they were nearly impossible acts.
Cold acts. Acts of self-violation, a voluntary reprise of the
initial horror.

But somehow, it was done.

Kimura stayed there, seated before
the heaving, groaning dome mountain, until the line between self
and other dissolved, until the presence within was only a
pressure and then not even that, until the space that had been
life was an emptiness, and he was alone.

Until he knew.

The right choice, he
thought. What I wanted.

He only wondered, flying back to Calpyso
with eyes still wet with acid tears, how long the emptiness would
be an ache where joy had once been.

This story was completed June 12, 1988, in Lansing,
Michigan, and originally appeared in the December, 1989 issue of The
Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. At this writing,
it's the last short story I wrote on spec, and the last story of
mine to appear in one of the traditional digests.